Kezira
by Brown-eyed snowy owl
Summary: This is essentially a Mirror of Erised based fairytale. I've tried to write it quite poetically, but still with a proper storyline, and am quite pleased with the result. Please tell me what you think!
1. Chapter 1

_**Prologue**_

The dark stones of the room glistened with shining beads of damp that had slowly encroached upon the lavish wall hangings and soft carpet. These were laden with the thick, heavy dust of accumulated silence – years of unchallenged, unchanging silence.

Occupying one corner was a tall mahogany wardrobe, once highly polished so that the bevelled rectangles on the doors served almost as mirrors. The only other carving on it was on the sharply curving headpiece; the figure of a sitting wolf, motionless but sentient, guarding this forgotten place. Dust was ingrained in the crevices of its paws and tail, and yet none had settled in the cracks of its eyes, which gleamed as it crouched there, a grey-coated watcher.

In contrast to the wardrobe was, on the outside wall, an elaborate, elegant dressing table, covered in beautiful engravings of pine forests and mountains, wild deer, birds, and other scenes and animals captured in the wood. Around the curving s-shaped legs, intricate chains of flowers twined. But an ancient mixture of dust and damp filled the etched lines with black grime, black as deep forest earth, which could just have been seen through the layer of silver dust, had there been any eyes to see it. Only the wolf's, gazing across the room.

Above the dressing table was a small, arching window, each glass pane lined with the same black grime. Little light came in through the window, and so the darkness and silence weighed down upon the air.

A mirror had been placed in the centre of one of the walls adjoining that of the window, that it might reflect what light there was around the room. It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. Around its top was carved not a wolf, but an inscription: 'Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.' There was terrible power in those words and in that beautiful mirror. It did not reflect the light; it reflected nothing, but stood, waiting.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Chapter 1**_

_A/N: Please review this, and tell me what you think. It's not going to be a long story, so you won't get many chances. Therefore, review it after reading __this__! Thank you for reading it._

The screaming had faded long ago, receding into memory. Metres of long, stone corridors, lined with heavy tapestries; heavy of weight and heavy of colour, were left behind also. And more were entered. The hanging tapestries absorbed the echoes of her steady footsteps, but she tried not to look at them, and to think of them as blankets, to hide her and protect her. Green, like the pines of the forest; deep blue like surrounding night; dark red like the lining of the womb. But occasionally, turning a corner, one would be in front of her eyes, unavoidable, and the scenes of battle carnage would jump out to her, or the face of Thor, seeming to look at and into her, thunderbolts raging in a furious hand. Forcing herself to allay the swirling uprisings of fear, and to remember that to run would lead her by more and more of these portraits, she took even, balanced steps, and continued walking.

The doors which she passed towered menacingly in their stone frames, and aggressive draughts curled from stone archways filled with shadows. They were secret-keeping. She felt their gaping, closed stares on her back, through her thin cotton-silk dress, but did not stop to turn her head. Kezira knew she was right to fear them as she drifted through the cold stone veins of the castle. She feared to step through into a place from where she could not turn back. She feared to see that which could not be unseen, and to learn their secrets.

She had not come for the sake of finding, but for the sake of forgetting. The silence had been the wrong place to come. She would not come again. But there was one room she wanted to know, and to feel. And so, walking here, in the castle's power, she asked it to show her the way to the room which had been her grandmother's.

The tapestry on the wall was different. It depicted a mountain range at night, with the ancient stars sewn above it, sparks from an unquenchable, beautiful fire. A river ran down from the mountains, into a forest. It did not appear again. The forest was cut off by the edge of the tapestry, and next to it was a door. Kezira made her fingers touch the handle for a few seconds, and then swiftly she turned it and went in.

The window was opposite her, with the dressing table beneath it. On the wall to her right was a hanging, and on her left hand-side, on the wall of the door, was another. And on the remaining wall, where a bed would be, was a mirror. She was drawn to the mirror, and slowly she went to it. It seemed to Kezira to be absorbing the feeling and the light from the room. She glanced around again, and suddenly she saw the wardrobe, and the wolf. It glared at her, and instantly she realised she was intruding – trespassing. She would have run to the door but the wardrobe was behind it, and she would have had to try to find her way back to the familiar parts of the castle with all the time the memory of terror behind her. She thought of her grandmother; her strange, wise grandmother, who had smiled so sadly at her sometimes, before she died, and she stared back at the wolf. It was like a password. The wolf seemed no longer threatening and accusing, but watchful. Nervously, carefully, Kezira turned back to the mirror.

For a moment, she saw nothing at all. Clear, shining glass lay over a pool of blinding, pure silver. She looked away, down at her white hands, and briefly checked that the door was still open. She could feel her hair sweeping the back of her neck as she moved her head. When she gazed at the mirror again, she saw herself once more. Intrigued but wary, she leaned forward, trying to understand why the reflection had made her step back. She was sitting on the floor, dark hair tied up in some way, but a strand that had worked its way loose was tucked behind her ear in the way her mother always criticized her for. She smiled as she noted this. Whatever this reflection was telling her, it was not to succumb to her mother's endless remarks about her hair. The reflection was wearing her precious blue dress, spread around her on the floor, apparently not noticing the way that was going to crease it. Instead, she was intent on the reading of the small book she had on her knee. Kezira dropped to her real knees, aghast and amazed. She couldn't read like her brothers – she was forbidden. What was the mirror telling her?

She got to her feet again, the silence of her unanswered question reminding her where and who she was. She could feel that the mirror was dangerous. And yet it had not harmed her, only shown her herself. Though that in itself could be dangerous, particularly if it was acted on. But she knew nothing about the mirror, except what it had chosen to show her. If it was a message from one of the Gods it could be equally, if not more dangerous, to ignore what she had seen. She was dangerously sceptical about the Gods, though she had never said anything aloud, chancing that if they did exist they would be too preoccupied with their favoured heroes to explore her mind. She would never be a hero; she had no desire to be one, and from the legends that seemed to be a prerequisite. The Gods, to her, seemed even more bestial than men. Quickly she restrained her thoughts. It suddenly occurred to her that the mirror could be a test, and the Gods might then be watching her.

Breathing deeply, Kezira calmly flooded her mind with white, and instinctively turned to the wolf. She stared at it and, feeling strangely that something was required, she curtseyed in recognition of the wolf's authority over the room. Without moving, its muzzle dipped in acknowledgment and its eyes released her. After glancing at the mirror, she went back into the passage, closing the door carefully behind her.

_Please review!_


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 2**

_A.N. – Thank you to my __only__ reviewer, Rose-Eyed Angel. Please: I'd love to know what you think. But let's not waste your time. I'm not here to plead, but to continue…_

Where the fields meet the forest is where cultivation meets wilderness. In spring it was wonderful to wander through the grass; just far enough away from the grey castle to have the illusion of freedom, and yet close enough that she was allowed to walk here. In the early winter evening, the fierce wind was cold as it rippled through her dress and untied hair. The quiet was beginning to become unsettling, and the trees too near. The dusk had fully settled and Nature was claiming her time alone. Kezira crossed her arms over her chest and let herself be driven away from their dim murkiness. By the time she looked back again, the fringe was a dark outline.

She was just coming up to the castle when she caught sight of her brothers climbing up from the stables. Kezira ran to greet them, and seeing her, they abandoned their conversation and quickened their pace to meet her.

"A good hunt?" she inquired.

Audric grinned.

"We got a wild boar and Reymon got a stag, pretty much single-handed. But he's too tired to even crow about it! Honestly, brother!"

"Don't worry, Ric. I'll make sure to remind everyone at least six times when we're eating the venison," Rey assured him.

"Reymon, would you mind discussing something with me, briefly?" interrupted Kezira, sounding more confident than she had intended. "It isn't urgent but I…"

Audric stared at her inquisitively.

"Can I not be privy to this entrancingly secretive discussion?!"

Kezira met his stare, surprised, and a perceptible frown flickered across her face.

"Of course you may," she replied, raising her eyebrows slightly, "For it's about Marini."

Audric sharply turned on his heel and began striding away, calling out:

"You're right, Kezira. I absolutely _cannot_ talk about my little sister _again_. By the gods, ever since she was _born_…though she can be sweet, I admit. I'll go and search out Mother."

Kezira waited until her eldest brother had disappeared up the steps into the castle. Then she began to walk quietly around the wall to a place where there were few windows – just the cold, thick barrier of the stone walls that she had known since birth. Reymon silently followed.

When she had stopped, he faced her and said, in a low voice,

"This is not about Marini."

Kezira nodded.

"It is not."

"Are you well? Because, Kezira, you have said precious little to anyone except Marini for over a week. I know you speak only when you have something to say, as you confided in me when you were ten, but you have been distant and preoccupied at the same time. I doubt if the others have noticed, as you are the supposed epitome of the perfect lady... beautiful, accepting, and whatever else a perfect lady is meant to be."

The moon was out, and Kezira drew strength from it, and from the light of the stars, the shining specks reminding her of the tapestry. The tapestry that was her grandmother's. "Yes," she conceded eventually. "I have been preoccupied. For I can no longer be the perfect lady. Not that I have ever been, truly. I have tried."

There was a sadness, deep within her. She had tried, and she was succeeding, at least in the gaze of others. And in the gaze of others she would continue to be, she hoped. But it was no longer what she wished. She wished to know more than she could discover by listening. If she must sacrifice some of herself for another part, then it would be so.

"Reymon. I wish to read."

Her brother stepped back, all the sincerity and thought of his sister's words mixing with the rustling beauty of the night, and Kezira, motionless, standing by the wall. She began to speak again, slightly frightened by his reaction, and by the power of her own words.

"I think it may be a message from one of the gods. I _must_ learn."

Reymon looked at her for a moment, and slowly nodded.

"I will teach you."

_A.N.-Please review. Thank you for reading this!_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 3**

_A.N. - Thank you very much to Arrow and Hunchbook for being so encouraging. Now on…_

Kezira lay, motionless, on her bed, staring at the white silk above her; its curling patterns, which were flowers, and not flowers – strange flowers, monotonous yet beautiful, they invited her wandering gaze to follow their lines. Thoughtlessly, she obeyed, her eyes drawn down and up and around, led without her will, and, though tiring, there was no place that would let her stop. Her eyes were lured on, and suddenly she was frightened of the patterned silk that would not let her go. She pulled her eyes away and rolled onto her side.

Her little sister lay there, sleeping. Strands of snow-blond hair criss-crossed her small upward cheek, plastered there when they had been pressed against the pillow. But now she had turned over in her determined, sweaty slumber.

Kezira studied her face. Her eyelids did not flutter; she was not dreaming. Behind those eyelids were the blue-green eyes which had, five years ago, inspired her mother to name her Marini. They had seen more since then. Kezira had helped them to see, and to know, and to gently close during the telling of a carefully rationed story, invented by the woven hours of gathering night. But they had been cruelly torn open – torn open to the endless running thread of perfect flowers, and the quiet acceptance that bound them to the white linen. It was Marini's pleading, accusing eyes as she was faced with this, and her screams, that Kezira had run from, escaping and walking far into the cold, abandoned veins of the castle.

Marini's eyes were once more oblivious to the world as Kezira lifted the blankets back and slipped out of the high bed. She trod silently over to the table on the opposite wall, where the sinking orange candle danced in its flickering reflections. She peered for a moment at the shining table, hair falling to embrace its light before she steered it away and lifted the candle in her hand. Carefully setting it down in the corner furthest from the bed, she swiftly recovered from under the mattress the book. Holding the forbidden object reverently, she knelt by the candle to read.

The chill of the stone floor was a shock but it quickly faded into the words on the pages. They ran in such a different way to the thread of her embroideries; the meaning was hidden in the painted rows of runes, gradually unwinding in her mind. After a few labyrinthine sentences the words would flow, the voices winding through her, the times and places rising and setting within her while she stared, unseeing, at the turning pages.

Eventually Kezira closed the book, quietly, and stared at it. The words within were beautiful, but she could feel it was not the one she had to find. Despairing, frustrated tears threatened and she let them come until they sparkled across her vision, blinding her to everything but the floor, the light, and the heaviness of the old, word-filled book resting in her hand. Somehow, she felt strengthened by it and the tears receded. She would continue her search for the book which she had seen herself with, but tomorrow night she would continue exploring this one. Replacing the book and the candle, she climbed back into bed, and let herself drift into sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 4**

_A.N. - Thank you very much for reading. I hope you are enjoying it! Hunchbook, (you are a wonderful person by the way :D) this should answer two of your questions. Thank you again __**everyone!**_

"Kezira."

She whirled around, and the book she had been holding crashed to the floor in a tumbling mass of precious pages. She looked down at her empty, incriminating hands. They shook, as did the rest of her body, and she saw a sharp image in her mind. It was of a dry autumn leaf after a sudden gust of wind, trembling in its wake until it finally accepts its fall, and arcs, spinning, down to the brown ground. Kezira joined her hands in the fold of her skirt and raised her head.

"Yes?"

Reymon entered her bedroom, silently striding to pick up the book and replace its dusty, sliding pages while Kezira sank to the floor beside him, the image of the leaf fading, the trembling gradually subsiding. Her brother reached to take her hand, and met her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Kezira."

He was very serious, and his hand held hers unusually tightly. Kezira could not remember her older brother holding her hand since the day before her eighth birthday, when she had been so terrified of growing up. She smiled at the memory; his hand's reassuring squeeze as he led her from the room where he had found her, sitting alone, through the corridors, only letting go when she had had to turn left to her room and he right to his. She had felt him encouraging her, in the left-over warmth of his ten-year-old hand, even as he walked in the opposite direction. Suddenly into her wandering thoughts, from nowhere, or rather from somewhere deep inside her, came the sound of Marini's screaming. That sobered her, bringing her back. Unexpectedly, she perceived the fear now present in her brother's eyes.

"What has happened?" she asked, holding back her fears in the mantle of calm, perfect obedience – the white mantle which had been given to her by her mother, and her father, and all who had ever seen her. All except her brother Reymon.

He spoke hurriedly, and intently, she listened.

"I need the books back, all of them. Quickly. Father thinks Tancred has stolen them, and he will be whipped. Tancred is old; sixty or seventy even – he will not survive much of this treatment – he's taught me since I was six – he's taught us almost everything that Audric and I know, but Audric thinks that he did it, and agrees with Father to whip him. Quickly, Kezira, please."

She jumped up, running to the mattress and carefully but swiftly pulling the books out from beneath. There were four, altogether.

"You cannot carry them all, but neither can I be seen holding them. How…?" Her whisper trailed off.

"You will have to be carrying two of them for me. Kezira?"

She paused in her handing the other two of the books to him, and he continued,

"Thank you, Kezira."

He gave a very formal bow, and she frowned, confused. Her brother knew that bows, flattery and other pretences that were women's payment for wearing their cloak of silence, were not the sort of thing she required. After all, her cloak was not the same. _Her_ white cloak had been carefully remade; re-stitched until it was not a cloak of silent submission, but a cloak of silent freedom.

Together they ran from the room, around the sharp, stone corners blurred by Kezira's flying thoughts. She had never even spoken to Tancred, though she had glimpsed him once or twice in the great hall, and yet she was risking discovery for him. Suspicion certainly, from Audric, and from the servants, whose gossip and speculation would trickle through their hierarchy until eventually, she knew, it (or rather, a distilled version) would reach Lady Keyne. Her mother had always distanced herself from her daughter, but Kezira sensed that she was watched carefully. The Lady did not quite trust her. But her father's suspicion, Kezira pleaded with the fates as she hurried after her brother, would be averted by the twisting skirts of her demure, dark dress and her lowered, obedient eyes; the eyes of a seldom-seen, noble daughter.

Having slowed down, Reymon glanced back at her, nodded, and disappeared through the threshold of the open door on his right. Swiftly, she followed.

She first saw Audric, leaning against the wall in the opposite corner, and his eyes widened when he caught sight of his sister. They travelled to the books in her arms, and his face changed, suddenly hostile. She quickly looked at Reymon, searching for direction of what to do, and hoped that Audric saw this uncertainty and interpreted it as a result of the heavy books which she was holding in a deliberately awkward way. Reymon was doing the opposite, she observed bizarrely; he was trying to make his stance possess more authority as he hovered by the edge of the great desk. On one side of the enormous mahogany desk stood a bent old man, cowering before Lord Ingon, who towered on the other side. Yet somehow, the old tutor had an inherent dignity which was retained even in his cowering.

Lord Ingon turned to his younger son and waited for him to speak. At once, Reymon explained, as briefly as possible, that he had removed the books from the library in order to read and study them during the evenings.

"And why did you wish to do that, Reymon?"

"I missed several days on which I had planned to do it by going hunting, Father."

Lord Ingon nodded, accepting and approving this reason, but still inquiring with a sharp glance,

"Audric also went hunting. Why is it that he did not also have to make up the time?"

Only Kezira, from her position standing discreetly behind her brother, could see his hands behind his back clasped firmly together, to stop them trembling. She recalled her own shaking hands only a few minutes earlier. It was strange how they could betray one so easily – almost as easily as the face. Hurriedly she checked that hers was expressionless. Reymon cut short the stretching pause by replying,

"I was disorganized Father. I apologize." He dropped his head ashamedly.

"You will apologize to Tancred later. Please could you first explain to me why your sister is carrying two books. As you know, it is _strictly _forbidden for women to possess them."

"Yes, Father. I asked Kezira to help because I couldn't find a suitable servant to assist. I do realise the implications of her carrying the books here, but I believe that she _can_ now be trusted with the whereabouts of the library, after fifteen years of not knowing."

Kezira concentrated on her breathing as she listened, looking at her skirts, trying not to let her face colour but to remain totally passive as she felt her father's gaze scrutinize her in the cold morning light. It was something she had had enough opportunity to practice at the seasonal dances and feasts given for the village, when she would feel the eyes of the villagers scour her face as she sat, searching for clues about her. Worse were the eyes of the old Lords, and the Lords' sons, their probing eyes briefly curious about this mysterious, modest daughter of Ingon, before passing on. But her father's gaze was different, and more penetrating, examining his suddenly grown daughter. It did not pass on, but it eventually lessened and she felt judgement pass.

"Kezira, please give the books to your brothers' tutor."

Kezira finally raised her head, and slowly walked to the old man. One by one, she passed over the two books, quickly glancing at the authors' names as she did so. Her father nodded at her and she swiftly she trod softly to the door, four stares upon her neck. There was one stare, mixed in, that made her afraid. There was a sharpness hidden in it that made her skin tingle, as if somebody held an invisible silver knife there. Kezira left her father's study and silently alert, she found her way to her embroidery room.

_Please review. But thank you even if you don't._


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 5**

The grey afternoon light of the winter sun spun her skirts with silver as she rushed across the space of her father's study, and through the arch, into the library. Calmly and quickly, Kezira scanned the deep red pinewood shelves for the correct spaces. Her gaze brushed over the dark spaces before she recognized them, but the memory of eight days ago was vivid, and she had not forgotten.

After three days of fading from her father's mind, Kezira had hazarded the journey back through the route which she had carefully marked in her mind to her father's study. She had guessed that the archway in the corner, behind the desk, was the entrance to the library. Taking those first few steps from the archway had been some of the most vital – and irrevocable – that she had ever taken; suddenly, thinking back on it, she recalled the shadowy archways she had passed while she found her way to her grandmother's room. She had thought while passing them that she didn't want their secrets, and yet now she was entering, for the second time, the room which contained so many secrets that all the women in the world were protected from them. But not all the women in the world; some surely desired the knowledge and held it safe within them, treasuring it and using it? A woman could not lift a sword, but _why_ should she not wield knowledge as effectively as any man?

Through her wandering arguments a thought, like an arrow, pierced. It struck Kezira, and she froze, clutching the two books gathered in her arms tightly to her chest. Had the mirror been showing her what she _should_ do, or had it simply been showing her herself, so that in her reflection she could see what she truly wanted? If it _had_ been – if it had not been the gods, then she was following only her own desires, with no divine protection or guidance… and, the arrow spread its icy realisation further, she could not even be sure it was her own desire.

For had she wished to read before she saw herself in the mirror?

Kezira tried to find her way out of the labyrinth of endlessly rhetorical questions which she had created for herself, but they wouldn't let her go. Every time she flickered an answer at them the questions slithered in her mind to reshape themselves into a new, more complex snare. _Had she wished to read?_

It echoed through the book-filled shelves, shivering through the inmost, tightly packed pages. The books waited, pregnant with answers, but holding them, unwhispering. Kezira replaced the two which she had taken and looked around at the forbidden library. Her answer lay here somewhere, in the book which she had seen herself reading. She only had to find it.

She noticed a movement in the archway. Someone had found her: the one whose gaze had been so sharp the day she came to the study. Kezira gazed again at the rows of books, searching them with her mind.

"Whoever it was that led me to the mirror, please, let me know the right book." For the first time in her life, Kezira pleaded, murmuring in her mind and her heart, repeating her prayer.

"My Lady?"

The silvery irony of the words struck Kezira. She could be no lady, being here, and the speaker had more power over her than she, even as a lady, would ever have had over him. But she saw hope in pretence; a chance of dignity at least. Therefore, composing herself, and so perhaps composing her fate, she turned to face the wizened man in the archway.

"Tancred." She inclined her head. "You wish to know what I am doing here."

He remained silent, and she turned back to the shelves.

"I am searching for a book. Please, could you help me?"

Still, he remained silent. She turned her carefully held head back to him and understood his silence as he struggled to find an answer – he was indebted to her for giving back the books, risking her own discovery. But that meant he knew it had been her who was reading them.

"You are not searching to help Reymon."

It was a statement. Kezira agreed.

"No."

"Would you return this to its place for me? I feel a little weak."

She accepted the book, glancing at the author's name, and headed to the window, next to the A section. Too late she realised what she had done and halted before the window, framed by the dying sun's light. He smiled wryly.

"Age has one advantage; experience, my Lady."

Again, that ironic use of 'my lady', but Kezira did not feel it was mocking her – it was tinged with respect. Why did he respect her?

"You took note of the authors of the books as you gave them to me in your father's office, so that you could find them again. Reymon has taught you to read, as I taught Reymon." She noticed that he had hesitated before speaking her brother's name for the second time. Perhaps he had been going to say Audric, and then hadn't, because he hadn't taught Audric much, despite her brothers' joint lessons. He resumed speaking quickly, as if to cover up his omission.

"I assume he has been teaching you since the books which he has already read began disappearing."

This time Kezira remained silent, as there seemed to be no answer to that except a 'yes'. He had to, as she had done, respond with a question.

"What exactly are you searching for?"

A bright, twisting little flame at the base of her throat alerted her to her chance. Summoning the mirror image of herself to that place behind her eyes, she saw the book.

"The book is small, and thin. It is bound in light green. I do not know the title."

Tancred stared at her and nodded.

"Follow me."

Tense but calm, she followed him out of the library, through her father's study, to stand before her father in his map room. There, Tancred stood to one side and condemned her. She had not condemned him to her father's wroth – she had saved him. But the knowledge whispered in the remnants of her white invisibility cloak: one cannot expect the same treatment from others. One can only do what one believes is right and hope others extend the same courtesy.

Her father's face was cold and bleak, like the stony mountain top. She could picture him standing on it, surveying the black, dense forest spread out beneath him, alone above the world with white-grey clouds billowing behind his blurred outline. The only part which was sharp was the face she saw. It was searching for something, ravaged by deep lines, and his expression was of one who had, in losing the thing, lost himself. This was the face Kezira perceived as she looked at her father, and she felt shivering metal tears gather in her heart before they slipped, shining, through her voice and into the waiting, storm-filled air.

"I will show you why, Father!" she cried out desperately. "I believed it was a message from the gods – that this was what they wished me to do. Please, let me show you."

She did not take her eyes from her father, clinging to her hope that the ancient beliefs that had been handed to him from thousands of years would hold his fury and he would believe her. Narrowing his eyes, he nodded.

"Then if you can, show me this message."

She led the way, praying to the essence of the castle, to all her ancestors, to the gods, and to her grandmother, to guide her feet and her words. Before the tapestry she stopped again, and touched the second smallest star. Through the door, she met the eyes of the mahogany wolf and he nodded, accepting her, though his stare turned accusingly to her father and to Tancred who followed. Quickly she moved to the mirror; again came that flash of silver and then the reflection was there again. It was as she remembered it, with herself in her precious blue dress with her hair up in that strange way, and the book on her knee.

Lord Ingon stood beside her, so close to her. She could not remember ever having been so close to her father. She gazed at the stones of the wall on the right of the mirror for a moment, and then turned back as she felt his angry stare on her. Her breath caught, shocked by his accusing fury.

"I see nothing. Only myself and you, who have degraded yourself to the extent even of lying about the gods," he spat.

Despairing helplessness whirled inside Kezira, the helplessness which she had been trying to save herself from since she was born, a high-born daughter.

"But I am kneeling," she pleaded, "with a thin, green book in my hands. I am reading it."

"There is no book in your hands!" he snarled.

"And there is no such book in this castle," added Tancred quietly. "Not that I know of."

Her father turned to regard him, and then flew from the room, his temper leaving a wake of writhing words behind him. Left alone with Tancred, Kezira shakily considered what she could do. She glanced in the mirror, and saw herself again; she glanced at her grandmother's dressing table, and the wolf, carved into the wardrobe, and she drew strength from these remnants of her grandmother.

"If there is no such book in this castle," she murmured to Tancred and to herself, speaking softly, but with resolve as she realised she spoke the truth, "then I must write one myself."

_A/N: I'm getting near the end now (I hear you breathe a sigh of relief – no, I do hope you're enjoying it!) but my next chapter won't be up for a while so I thought I'd make this one long. Please, please review, everybody!!!_

_Coco_


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 6**

_A.N. - This is probably my penultimate chapter, not including the epilogue. So the end of Kezira's tale is not so far away - but the tale of the eleven-year old boy who looks into the same Mirror a millenium later is, ironically, going to end first! I love the Harry Potter books (ever since I was given them for my seventh birthday) and I'm really nervous for my favourite characters! I don't know what I'll do with myself when I've finished reading - well, I do - I'll write. This and "A Small Slight Figure", but not until August, since I'm going to America, so sorry in advance for the delay. Thank you for reading, Hunchbook and Rose-eyed Angel!_

"_The silver was frosted as Silje recovered it from the tangled forest grass, and she had to grip it hard in order that the dewy, twinkling object did not skim from her hands and tumble back to the ground. As she held it up to examine it in the dappled light of the trees, it caught the sun and sparkled blindingly. Having instinctively swung her head away, she held it close to her clearing eyes and searched it for a clue as to what it was. _

_It was heavy as gold and yet delicate as carven water. Silje turned it over in her hands and suddenly understood; she saw the curving line of holes and placed her fingers carefully to cover them. The reverence she felt reminded her of prayer, and for a moment she thought of praying – but to whom? To the Gods who had given direction to her family to simply abandon her, and leave her by the riverside? She did not know the name of the fish who had tasted her tears in the water and led her to the tree trunk…but she should of course thank again the nymph who had told her the path to here. Touching the little silver flute to her lips, Silje thanked the nymph as articulately as she could without the voice that had been stolen from her, and blew. Somehow, exquisitely, the notes fashioned themselves into dancing words; words that were not words, but surpassed words in beauty and meaning. The music drew all the fermenting poison of bitterness from her heart…"_

Kezira's hand halted on the page, and she laid her quill at the paper's side. Smiling, she lifted her head to contemplate the room around her, but her smile gradually faded. She had taken so long to write just that tiny passage, and as she came back to her senses she realised how cold her hands and feet had become in that time. The back of her neck too, raised its objection as she turned her head to survey the mirror and then the door, which was slightly ajar. She was writing at the dressing table, having carefully cleared it of its shimmering grey dust. But she had tried not to scrape out the black grime that had worked its way into the etched strokes. Strangely, she had thought that this mark of the table's age only gave it more beauty, accentuating the curving lines; somehow she felt that this was how her grandmother too would have perceived it.

She turned back to the ink-filled page. The last, newly-crafted words were still glistening, blue-green-black, and the empty line led on. Her fingers picked up her quill again, poised to go on, to fill the impatient space. But what to put there? Kezira hesitated a moment longer, formulating her ideas into intricate melodies – composing, then began once more to write.

"_The flute's tone changed as through it, she told her story. The topmost branches of the trees, far above her head, swayed as they listened and rustling, they whispered her story to the breeze. The wind came down to the space around her that it might listen to more, moving in the grass. A squirrel froze when it heard the music as it came along a branch and ran back as if terrified, chattering, but the wild dog crouched among the high roots at the bottom of an old tree cocked its head at the interruption, and the squirrel scurried away with no more noise. No-one noticed when after a few minutes it surreptitiously returned, with several others creeping behind. _

_At last Silje's description faded away, and her tale drew fainter in her mind. Softly, it ended as she played of the scene before her, conveying not so much to her audience as to herself the feeling of her light fingers dancing, led by thought, and her wonder, and her gratitude. She lowered the flute and Silje stood there, entirely still, waiting with the animals for what would come next. The moments passed. Suddenly she felt a tickle up her arm and, slightly surprised, peered at her right shoulder. There was a small spider there. She smiled. _

_The spider fell from her shoulder, winding down on a shining silver thread from one of her hairs as if it had interpreted her smile as a signal. Swiftly traversing a dark twig, it travelled through the dense grass and she had to follow its progress carefully with her gaze to avoid losing the tiny animal. When she glanced up again at the other animals who had been there, they were gone. Understanding, she turned back to follow the path of the spider."_

Winter darkness had gathered in the corners of the window panes; gradually it had spread across their rough surface, the dirt-ridged glass conceding to the unassailable night. Seeing the deep blue, Kezira quickly pushed the chair back, the shock of cold apprehension making her breath catch. Snatching up her quill, she pulled open a dressing-table drawer, hurriedly whisked the feather in, reached for her ink-pot and just in time she held back her flying hand. She must not spill the ink that she had found. Kezira piled the paper neatly in the drawer, calming herself with her precise, neat movements. It was as she placed the ink back between the wall and the mirror where she had found it that she couldn't help glimpsing her reflection. That was how she had originally found the simple but beautiful clay phial; a lighter grey against the dark stones, hidden in the shadow of the mirror.

But the reflection was different. Now, Kezira saw the trees which she had spent so long describing, their thick trunks light-crossed. Amongst them – in the middle of the mirror – with her flute in hand and her eyes following a tiny spider, was Silje.

The passageway was completely silent. The tread of Kezira's shoes as she began to return was muted, as if either the soft leather around her foot, or the thick, long carpets that she walked upon, were not truly there. They did not both exist in the same time, together, but were held in this crossover place by the power of the castle. Tapestries and wet stone were obscured by the languorous grey-white fog that drifted, hiding them and drifting, winding its way into Kezira's mind and oppressing her thoughts with its white blankness. Instinctively resisting, she cleared her mind until she was aware of only herself; her solid body and her soul slipping, ethereal, through the layers of reality.

Marini's crying wound its way to her, echoing in the fog, until suddenly she registered it, hearing it properly – it was close, and loud – and she was thrown back into place and time. She began to run, her grandmother and the world that she had written, somewhere far behind her, forgotten.

The clamour rushed around her, a terrifying, engulfing music; like deafening water, falling – in her and through her and surrounding her in the tumult, hurtling, trying to find the way through, to the storm's eye, to her little sister.

Kezira burst through the door into their bedroom. Marini was lying in the middle of the floor, shouting and shouting, her head raised a little off the carpet so she could see the doorway, and her flushed face tear-streaked and grey where she had rubbed her raw fists across it. Her hands were still pounding it, the rough dirt having scraped her skin pink. The pushed door flying from her own outstretched hand, the sight stalled Kezira and she stood framed in the doorway. She just saw the recognition and relief in the desperate eyes before the small head of her wild sister sank into the carpet, sobbing.

Kezira stepped forward and dropped beside her, and gently prised the carpet from her fingers. Listening, she waited for the shaky gulps of air to subside. Eventually, they did, until Marini's crying became only the occasional sob melded into a hiccough, and she whispered to Kezira.

"I don't feel very well."

"No – you don't look very well either, Marini." She smiled sadly at her sister's shadow-covered face and was rewarded with the slow removal of an arm from around her head; uncovering two tear-bright eyes that tried to smile back, but Kezira could see that all the energy had gone from the small form. There was just enough energy left for everything to hurt, but none after to fight back with.

"No-one came," she stated, her whisper almost inaudible this time, but for the hiccough which broke the end.

"I came, didn't I?"

The head shifted on the carpet, rubbing more grime across a cheek.

"Where's everyone else?"

"Where they should be, Marini, and where I should be. In the hall, eating and drinking."

The eyes looked up at her, puzzled.

"But you're always where you should be. Ingra said so."

Kezira gazed at her for a long moment and she gazed back, waiting expectantly for an answer; a deciding solution from her older sister. For the first time, Kezira felt unqualified to give it.

"I was. But not anymore. Often now I am not where I should be, and found where I should not be. And now you are not in your old nursery with Ingra, but learning how to sew, and sleeping here with me."

"Should I not be?" the confused, tired whisper came back, as Kezira lifted her little sister onto her hip, and felt small arms curl around her. Her head was very hot, and heavy. "Can I go back to the nursery?"

"No, Marini…you can't go back to the nursery, any more than I can go back to being where I should be."

She tried not to jerk her sister as she carried her over to the bed, but stopped suddenly when she heard the least expected reply breathed onto her shoulder.

"Good."

"But you don't like sewing?"

"No – sewing's horrible. And you don't tell me stories anymore, like you used to when you came to the nursery, to help me be sleepy."

Kezira paused before answering, ashamed of the truth in this, as she resumed the journey to Marini's side of the bed.

"I'm sorry. I suppose I'm no fun anymore, either."

"Not really," she repeated, "but it's still good you're not always where you should be."

"How is it good, Marini?"

Marini let go and tumbled onto the bed, gasping with sudden pain when her head thumped softly on the mattress. Slowly rolling into a ball on her side, she looked up at Kezira again.

"You came," the six-year-old answered simply. "No-one else has."

* * *

Marini sweated as she lay on the straw-filled mattress, and as they moved her, the shadowy candlelight fluttered across her shining forehead and damp, tremulous eyelids, but the fever incarcerated her from inside. She would not wake up. Behind the candle, behind the table, in the dark corner of the room, Kezira stood, watching them carry her out. This small sister was the only one who had unquestioningly accepted her change – with a curious, open mind; a malleable mind. It would have been taken away from her soon anyway. Marini's head lolled as she was carried across the threshold. Then the footsteps were gone down the corridor and the room was empty except for Kezira, alone.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

_A.N. – I like this so__ I'm going to actually finish it! I could swear Kezira's right behind me, willing me to get on with it. Anyone else ever get that with characters? So yes, summary:_

_Living in__ Norway, in the Dark Ages, the daughter of an aristocrat, Kezira finds a mirror (the mirror of Erised) hanging in her dead grandmother's room that her father, a man completely happy, has not distinguished from a normal mirror. In it she first sees herself reading a book from her father's library, which it is forbidden for women to enter. She becomes obsessed with what might be in the book that she sees herself reading, and wants to learn to read, and to write. _

_Tancred, her brothers' tutor, is an old__, wise man who looks after the library. Though at first her brother Reymon teaches her and she practices at night, while her little sister sleeps, her father notices that the books have gone missing, and she has to return them. This saves Tancred from being beaten. Put soon afterwards, looking for the book which she saw herself reading in the library, Tancred comes across her. She confides in him, but he just takes her to her father. Although Kezira tries to show him what she saw in the mirror – which she thought was a message from the gods – he sees nothing. In the wake of his fury, she realises that she must _write_ this book. She begins._

_She is about two-thirds through when Marini (her little sister with whom she used to share bedtime stories) falls ill, and Kezira is the one to discover this. By the middle of the night Marini's fever has increased even further, and she is carried out of their room, leaving Kezira alone._

The cold bled up through the wintry stones; up through the cracks to the floor and through her insubstantial silk slippers as if they were not there. Staying still, she let it spread until it reached her heart and, pulsing warmth like a leaden bird, it stopped the cold's onslaught. Pointlessly, she, the elder sister, thought, with no sympathy to give even to her own heart.

Kezira forced her feet to move; and there was carpet underneath them again. Her frozen fingers touched the wood in the dark: a bedpost. Too far from the candle to be illuminated by its flicker, her nightdress could not keep any warmth around her. Staring past Marini's bed-base – stripped of the mattress and its occupant – Kezira's reflective gaze detected the change in the tapestries behind it. All their characters had gone. Their faces were still there, like the after-image of a dying fire in the back of the eye when you turn your head, but she could feel that they were just names on a sewn grave. If Marini died, their stories would be remembered only by her; somewhere behind an interminably kept façade. Her fingers gripped the bedpost so tightly that the patterns seemed to carve into them, as if she was holding it up.

Gradually she relinquished the bedpost, turning back to the candle. Having understood the implications of Marini's death, she knew also that she was powerless to do anything except pray – to gods she whom she believed non-existent. The chasm of sleep, and of the room, stretched; the end of her blanket whispered of forgotten comfort. Tonight, both threatened to suffocate her. The ironic candle was burning, tall with time for waiting. Kezira suddenly, almost furiously, strode to the candle, extinguished it with a pinch of her fingers, and watched the invisible smoke begin to wind its way upwards for a second before walking swiftly out of the room.

Back through the corridors and passageways – without a light, but her feet knew it well by now, as if her grandmother had written it on her hand – through the layers of certainty and normality which had somehow shifted tonight. Things may have lurked in the darkness, but they were reduced by other fears to just the folds of stone and shadow and tapestry which they were, and they were passed by without being paid attention to. The room was as far away as always, but the carelessness of her steps sped her on and Kezira could have been sure that she had, at one point, tasted the sweat on Marini's ravaged skin from its smell in the air. The room was connected to the rest of the castle tonight. Reaching up to touch the star of her grandmother's tapestry, she entered the room. Having greeted the wolf, seriously, but too urgent to be hugely respectful, she immediately turned to the mirror and standing beneath it, waited. It flashed silver, and Kezira was seeing somewhere, and someone, else.

_There was a cleft in the tree's trunk wide enough for the head and shoulders of a small child but Silje knew that she could not get through. The spider abseiled down her bare arm, its many feet tickling her skin as it bounced__;_ _but it did not make her turn her eyes from the tree. The shape seemed to her to be the gateway to fairyland, when she was too big to get through. The spider was traversing again, over the grass; she watched, tiredly intrigued as it climbed the tree partway, to the second split of its branches, and then reversed on itself, running right down again and turning upside down as it scuttled into the cleft. She waited for it to reappear, counting the seconds. It didn't come out again at once and she sat down on one of the tree's roots. The little recorder was in her pocket so Silje took it out to pass the time. Fingering it and examining it again, she was tempted to play it, but she got the feeling that she wasn't meant to. This part of the forest would not let all its animals come to her, and she might not want them if they did. Alarmed by her thoughts of wolves, she pressed her back to the tree and swept her sight into as many of the little corners behind the trees around her as she could. Her search told her nothing. Nothing moved. She fingered her flute again, putting her fingers on it and releasing them in order. The movement was relaxing. She looked around. Then, surreptitiously, gradually and ready to stop if there was any movement anywhere, she raised it to her lips, and blew softly, rippling her fingers up._

_She was breathing too fast – she had just moved completely. Everything looked different, in the half-similar way of the forest. She was sitting on a rock, not a root, and she had no idea where the cleft tree was. It could have been in any direction; so she was now completely without a guide. She had begun to suspect that the spider was not going to return, but now it was useless even if it did. It wouldn't find her. The flute bumped against her lip, for she was still holding it to them._

_She rested it on her knees, staring at it, and then __abruptly let it go. The wind seemed to whistle through it in the second as it fell;_ _its breath snatching at the holes. It thumped against one of the twigs at her feet, and lay there, silent and desolate. Silje was too afraid to sigh. Fear and loss tugged in somewhere below her throat, where she was holding the sigh. It was all she could feel as she averted her eyes from the flute and studied the dirty, curving lines of her palms. There was blood deep beneath the skin. Silje couldn't feel it. The sigh was twisting, the air stale. She continued to hold it. Suddenly everything around her blurred..._

As Kezira looked at it, the blurred picture vanished completely. She turned away as it flashed silver and put a hand out to steady herself. It met the corner of the wardrobe, and she let out Silje's breath. Sickened dizziness trickled gradually away but Silje's feeling was still there inside her chest. Kezira walked more steadily to the window, refusing to be overwhelmed. It was midnight, or thereabouts. Her reflection was incredible pale – paler than usual – as if she had had a nightmare in which her heart had slowed. Her face was cut into several half-coloured diamonds by the lead of the window panes.

She turned and reached for the drawers of the desk, extracting her ink carefully. She took out her papers, and then her quill. Then she sat, and recorded what she had seen.

After a while, she reached the last image, and finished it, wondering why the mirror had blurred. She turned her head to search it but its clawed feet and indecipherable inscription guarded its secrets fiercely. For once, it showed her reflection. Resting her elbows on the desk, on either side of the precious paper with her neat writing scrawled in the irretrievable lines, Kezira rubbed her cold fingers over her eyes. Her forehead was damp with sweat beaded along her eyebrows, but her fingers were below; lost in the bruised crevasses of her eyelids. It was becoming difficult to reawaken herself.

She would not be asleep while Marini suffered. She might not be in her place beside her sister but she'd resolved to be in one as important; she was writing the story for Marini tonight, and keeping vigil from this room. They were estranged by the house, by icy passages, by chasmal traditions, and connected by the thin ribbon of the story. Kezira picked up her quill again, but didn't know how to continue.

The silence in the room had changed, or her perception of it had. She let herself absorb it. It was skin deep; thick as dust laid down, intended for her feet; enduring and restless as the gap between words. It wound around her motionless fingers, taking their weight and the weight of the quill. The skin, blood and feather were similar to something. Regarding them, she waited for the parallel to draw itself better. Suddenly her stomach folded, shoving realisation up to her semi-awake brain and down to her feet. Marini could have gone already; she could have left her on her own. She could be writing to a ghost. The silence deafened her and she winced as her chair scraped on the stone. She abandoned the room.

The doorway was dark and she knew how to be silent. She was good at watching; practised at being allowed to do nothing. The physician was holding the brass cup to the crook of Marini's limp arm. Kezira felt the blood trickling out like living seconds, unseen. They whispered past her through the doorway.

Marini's face was lit by a halo of tallow candles which, planted on the bedside table, grew inversely. The fire made the room sweltering, and ruddied the physician's hard brow. She would kiss it if he saved her sister. Three times, like for luck in the stories. Something moved at her feet and Kezira's attention was broken. There was nothing for her here but her parents and a small hand, lolling in forbidden space.

Kezira stopped. Where was she? The corridor was both dark and one of many on the route to her room; this castle was made up of waiting passageways. She was about three-quarters of the way down, by a window through which moonlight filtered. It was this window which had stopped her, startling her into lucidity for a moment, and out of her daze.

She looked out at the hill, sloping down to fields and eventually to forest. Somewhere, surrounded by the same stone walls, Audric would be confined to his bedroom or study, lest he contract the disease from anyone. He would be torturing himself almost as much as she was doing; whatever his show of having no time for their little sister.

Kezira recalled analytically how she had been subjected to the same show, and eventually accepted as invisible. It had been necessary for both of them; useful. Audric had not forgotten her, never, and Reymon followed him – but better. He used to catch her eye at their father's parties as they sat at opposite ends of the room, conveying to each other the empathetic need for patience.

Her forehead touched the vertical bars of the window, looking down. Somewhere down there, she had had that fateful conversation with Rey. That little bit closer, the wind blustered refreshingly around her face and neck, whipping her opposing black hair and pale nightdress into tangled harmony. She could not guess where Rey was now. The moon was about to go behind clouds. She drew back from the window, slipping back into her daze.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

In front of the mirror again, Kezira watched. Silje's fingers moved on the flute, making notes. Hers – a world away – echoed them with her quill. Everything in the mirror had refocused and Silje's tears were brushed away. Having picked up the flute, she adjusted her fingers carefully, and blew while they flickered down in a scale.

"_Silje was back where the spider had led her. What was the mystery about this place? She got up, and felt it, searching with her eyes and her spare palm around the cleft but there was nothing new, not even when she smelt it. She didn't dare taste it, lest the bark be poisonous, but did not think she would have learnt anything anyway. Embracing the trunk, flute held in a thumb and fingers wedged in the ridges of bark, she leant back and finally, looked up. _

_The layers of leaves and clouds shaded the stars from the earth, but the wind had parted the leaves of the tree momentarily and she glimpsed something: lights, yet far below the indomitable clouds. The leaves closed and she waited, cut off, for the next opening. It came in a different place and she swung her head back to stare desperately before it closed again. They were just tiny points of air, filled with light; like living snowflakes. But Silje felt despair creeping back. She had to reach them, she needed their help but they hadn't seen her! She thought back to where the spider had moved. Down her shoulder, tickling, and up the tree to the second split of the branches, then down into the cleft. Silje regarded the place where the right-hand branch sub-divided for the first time. If she could get up there to see closer...she was determined, and it would bring her just a little closer to the lights. Maybe they'd see her if she was there. _

_Silje stepped back from the tree but there were only a few foot- and hand-holds around the base, then the trail disappeared. Not that way then. She raised an eyebrow, and it caught an idea. The flute could move her sideways, if she played all the notes in order. If she started on a different one, it might take her a different direction. She raised it to her lips, and stopped. She wanted to go _up._ She looked at the split of the right-hand branch again, and contemplated her fingers, though there was little light to see by. Her right hand was the lower one. She lifted her second lowest finger, and played the note._

_Silje grabbed hold of the branch, about to fall down from the split – but she wasn't falling. It was as if she was standing on a platform. Spontaneously, she laughed. That was how to go up! Bringing the flute to her lips perfectly steadily while standing on a square of air, she lifted the finger two up from the second lowest, and blew. _

_This time, she was surrounded by leaves. Their rustling was like growing applause, or whispered encouragement. Crouching down, bare toes resting on wooden air, she parted the ones below her feet and could peer through to the floor. She wasn't overly sorry to leave it behind. Now, for the next step. She didn't know what she would find. Her sixth finger, up. Though her expression was touched with sadness, she smiled as she blew._

_She found herself above all the trees, amongst the lights. But as soon as she had appeared in the air they had started changing, unless she was just seeing them differently – no, they _were _getting bigger, and grouping together, until the lights formed shapes of two nymphs. One smiled at her, but the other one turned away her head."_

To meet Kezira's watching gaze. It was as if the mirror had turned around. Suddenly the picture disappeared, and she was released, back into the room.

The dust-greyed wolf on the wardrobe was waiting behind her, having been guarding her as she was absorbed obliviously in the mirror. She felt a surge of affection for it. Several sheets of precious paper lay scattered on the carpet around her knees but she hadn't the strength to tidy them. Judging by the tone of the window and the grey of the greenish stone, the morning had entered the sickening hours of should-be-light, submerged in wintry apathy. Kezira's head felt hot and heavy so she rested it on her knees.

She was burning up in here. Used up, like wax and ink and night-time: melting into the white of her sweaty nightdress. She felt ill. Kezira's closed eyelids pressed against her knees, splashing her mind with blurry lines and splodges, and she pulled her arms tighter around them. It was an odd shape against the rug that the wolf saw. Knowing that she was too tired to fight the vague dizziness around her, she let herself down until she lay there with her back against the floor, her hair underneath her mixing with the carpet's dust, and her face turned to the unforgiving ceiling. The layer of damp hair was making her hotter so she twisted it over one shoulder and up into a halo like a black moon at the back of her head. She had no energy to fidget, just to stare.

She wondered if Marini could hear her. Perhaps... Kezira summoned up words and sent them twisting silently on their way. Nothing replied, though she listened; there was only the breathing of the castle, eternal and immeasurable. It was more important than any of its occupants, she had always been aware. It was not something that she had ever thought of as hers. Her mind drifted for a while through its own tiny corridors, and she could almost have been sleeping.

Eventually a finger brushed the quill. She awoke – to tug some paper into the curve of her chest. Her hovering hand pressed an inscription onto it:

_For Marini_

_And for Rey,_

_Who should read it to her until_

_she reads it herself._

_With love, Kezira_

Having tucked it under other papers, she looked at the wolf. Its eyes were dull. At the end of that wall, almost imperceptible ferns spiralled up a leg of the dressing table and in the window the first tone of morning was kept out by the net of lead partitions holding the ancient panes in place. If she tried very hard Kezira could sense the January morning beginning outside, but she preferred that this room remained timeless. Its stone and carpet was holding her body while her mind was still somewhere in the mirror.

Kezira pulled a few sheets of paper towards her. She had started this story; she ought to finish it. Staring at the mirror, she waited for the familiar flash of silver. It came. She smiled, and her writing began to form words on the paper.

"_Silje did not understand the sorrow etched into the nymph's smooth face as they all waited. The wind blew around them, carrying the tastes of the world, and yet the nymph did not seem affected by this, as if she was listening for something fainter. Suddenly she smiled. _

"_I've found it." The nymph addressed Silje, who tried not to seem worried. "Your sister is coming with us." Shocked and puzzled, Silje frowned. _

"_But I do not have a sister." The nymph stared back at her, her smile elusive._

"_We shall go and meet her."_

_Silje felt as if she had semi-dissolved in the air but she could still see her translucent outline as they flew – or rather as she was carried along by the wind and the nymphs' arms around her. They went far, over a sea, but she could not feel the cold any more. There were beaches and woods and fields, spread out idyllically. Right inland, so they appeared tiny, there was a ring of mountains. They stopped at tree height. _

"_Here," the mysterious but benevolent second nymph stated. Obediently, Silje shut her eyes, her flute clutched tightly in her right hand. She could almost hear something in the air: her own flute playing, and something else?_

"_Silje." _

_She opened her eyes, and met those of her sister." _

The room was behind Kezira, through the mirror. She turned around for a moment to gaze back in. She had somehow managed to bring her quill with her, holding it in the same hand that the girl in front of her held a flute. The girl had her eyes closed. Kezira scrutinized her face. She knew that she knew it, or had known it, but wasn't sure. Her eyes were the key. The girl opened them, and Kezira met the eyes of her sister.


	10. Chapter 10

Epilogue

**Epilogue**

_A__.N.- Please review!! Anyone... Even if it's just to let me know it's awful...I don't know how clear I've made the ending...so reviews on that would be great! I hope you enjoy the very end, as far as it is "enjoyable"..._

_Happy summer to everyone,_

_Coco (Brown-eyed snowy owl)_

The scene was devastatingly quiet. Kezira's body lay in front of the mirror, paper scattered all around her. Reymon instinctively bent down to pick it up: assuming responsibility for it as he stared.

Cold January light swept over her pale skin, lighting the expression on her face; it would have been distant to others, but Rey could see closer. There were traces of happiness in the pencilled lines under her eyes, and peace. Perhaps she _had _felt that Marini had survived the night. Her eyes were open, as if searching for something. He put rough fingers out to close them as tenderly as possible, and then looked up at Tancred standing by the door. The ancient tutor had led him here, but he himself, her own brother, had not understood why soon enough.

"Fetch my father."

The old man nodded, and hurried away.

He noticed that the tip of her quill, clasped in her hand still, was clotted with dry ink. It was reflected in the mirror. Rey began to follow the curve of the reflected feather up, to where he thought for a moment that he would see the reflection of her sitting there reading or writing, just through the glass – but he pulled his eyes away and down to Kezira's face again. He lifted her head up, carefully tucked her tumbling hair into a pillow and smiled at the effect. As he asked permission, he was sure that her expression was a smile before he turned away to slip the paper under the carpet.

_Thank you. Please review. That's a conclusion to my second fanfic story, not that I've finished posting the first yet..._


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